Minutes of Services Advisory Committee Meeting – 4/3/2006

Main Discussion

Undergraduate Survey Recommendations

The committee began discussions regarding the set of Recommendations being written to accompany
the Survey Summary. The first topic discussed was awareness. According to the survey
results for questions 2 and 10, it seems apparent that students remain largely unaware of library
workshops and tutorials. Suggestions included moving the online tutorials within fewer clicks
of the Library homepage and creating better promotion materials for workshops. There was some
discussion regarding the belief that undergrads possibly learn better from their peers. One
idea suggested was for the UGL to train a group of undergrads and for that group to roam the UGL
with T-shirts announcing their ability to help. These undergrads could give a certain amount of
reference help as well as refer students to the reference desk. A final point of discussion
was undergraduate usage of subject-specific libraries. One suggestion would require libraries
to include a focus on undergrads in their annual report. Another suggestion was to experiment
with the idea of bringing subject-specific librarians into different libraries. Specifically,
this could be tried at the ACES library because of its vicinity to some of the dorms and its high
level of use according to the survey. This discussion will continue next month and all
suggestions will be considered for the final Recommendations document.

Faculty Survey Status

The faculty survey has had a few bugs due to web design which will delay the start of the survey
until April 10. Let Lisa know if you have questions.

Moropa Visit

Robert Moropa is the University Librarian at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
He will be on campus on April 27. The committee will meet with Mr. Moropa to discuss sharing
reference responsibilities between our schools, including chat services. Having such a
partner in a different time zone could allow students to have reference help available to them 24
hours/day.